The battlegroup system allows us to split or merge battlegroups on a per-patch basis if we need to, and we will be monitoring PvP activity in Fusang to see if further battlegroup tweaks are needed.

Much more on Fusang later, but first, lets talk about:

PvP Minigame Queuing tweaksWe have been monitoring the amount of PvP minigames being played, and we have seen that after patch 1.2 when the black mark rewards were increased for doing missions in Fusang, the activity in the minigames dropped. So we have done two things to fix this:

1: The matchmaking system has been tweaked to be a lot less fine-grained. To do this change properly we have had to wipe the games player skill ranking on each player, which means that after patch 1.4 when you start PvPing, you can be matched up against anyone. As you win and lose minigames, you build your rank, and you will get matched against players of the same rank as yourself. Also we are applying the Equal Footing buff in minigames now to alleviate this initial issue.

2: The rewards for doing minigames have been tweaked so that on average you should get the same amount of rewards for spending time doing minigames as you get from doing Fusang. With the caveat that El Dorado gives slightly more than Stonehenge and Fusang.

We are also looking into making it possible for signing up for both minigame types at the same time, and for signing up to minigames from Fusang, and for deciding your own group in Fusang. We know we want to do it, and we are currently looking into how we could do it, but we do not have an ETA yet, as this is a bigger change.

10.4 PvP Gear!Yes. As of patch 1.4.

PvP Economy UpdateWe have taken a good look at this and changed the pricing of PvP items. One of the major things we have worked on is to make sure that the effort required to get a full set of 10.4 PvP gear is on par with the effort required to get the 10.4 Nightwatch gear from Nightmare dungeons.

Balancing this is of course tricky, since just getting a full group together with the right gear who can play well enough to do a Nightmare dungeon is quite a tough entry level to reach compared to PvP which you can enter very early on. On the other hand, once you get a good nightmare group going and learn the dungeons you can do them fairly quickly. So rest assured that lots of excel sheets, math, and furrowing of brows went into deciding on this balance.

Fusang UpdateThis is the big one. We have done quite a few changes to Fusang. We call it Fusang 2.0 internally.

Our goals were to make sure that players are not incentivized to do facility trading, that you care about the objectives you own, and that outmatched factions in Fusang can still have fun PvPing there.

We have done 3 major changes.1: Fusang now has a tick-based reward scheme2: A new special mission becomes available for underdog factions3: You will now find new PvP vendors inside Fusang that you can use to upgrade turrets and custodians belonging to your faction.

1: The tick-based reward schemeMissions are no longer the primary source of rewards in Fusang, instead, every 3 minutes everyone in the contested area in Fusang gets rewarded based on the amount of objectives their faction currently holds as follows (values subject to change):

* 63 white marks for an outer facility* 126 white marks for a center facility* 7 white marks for an anima well

People outside of Fusang no longer get any white marks. Only people who are in the contested area (outside of their faction home base) in Fusang get these rewards.

Also, at any PvP vendor in the game you can now convert 100 white marks into 1 black mark, and no PvP items in the game cost white marks any more. Everything costs black marks instead.

AND: For patch 1.4 we are wiping all existing white marks in the game.

This is a big change, so it deserves a brief comment: We never felt the white marks worked well as a currency. Many players were walking around with hundreds of thousands of them, never spending them. So we felt they would be better used in this tick-based reward scheme where we needed a high granularity of rewards, given that you are rewarded every 3 minutes. So we decided to make 100 white marks convertible into 1 black mark at any PvP-vendor.

As a consequence, PvP-missions in Fusang no longer give Black or White marks of Venice as rewards, instead they only give XP.

These reward mechanics are currently on Testlive, so you can go in and try it out.

Currently on testlive you have the very first version of the UI of the PvP window to reflect these reward changes, a better version is currently being tested internally, and will make it out to patch 1.4. So for patch 1.4 you will be able to see how much each faction gets per 3 minute tick, and how long there is until the next tick, even if that functionality is not currently there on testlive.

2: The new Underdog missionIf a faction has not received a certain minimum amount of rewards within a certain period of time in Fusang, The Council of Venice will intervene and help out this faction. This means that all players of that faction get access to a new PvP mission called The Underdogs.

In this mission you must collect anima shards all over Fusang and use them on a shut down custodian near your faction HQ. These anima shards will recharge the custodian, and eventually bring it to life. Once the custodian is recharged, it will activate and help your faction against enemy players and enemy NPCs inside Fusang. This type of custodian is a much more powerful entity than the custodians you find defending the facilities. Also, it has a healing aura around it that heals the 10 nearest friendly players towards it. And it has powerful ranged and melee attacks that it uses against enemy players and NPCs.

The custodians on Testlive are currently a little bit more active than they will be in the patch, since they will normally have stationary combat. The custodians on Testlive will move during combat which the final versions in the patch wont.

Any feedback on the balance of the custodians are welcome. We have made them... very tough. Remember it is there to help a cornered faction in Fusang get an edge.

As part of the new PvP window you will be able to see whether any faction has access to do The Underdogs mission (indicated by a Council Support icon) or whether any faction has in fact managed to recharge a custodian, that is now spreading havoc in Fusang (March of the Custodian icon). The GUI is still being worked on for the patch, but the first version is on Testlive now.

3: New Fusang PvP VendorsInside Fusang you will now find PvP vendors inside each faction home base. At these vendors you can exchange your White Marks of Venice into Black Marks, and as something new you can buy various upgrades for turrets and custodians belonging to your faction.

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The tick rewards in fusang is a MASSIVE improvement, should stop all those facility swapping asshats at a stroke.

I'm less impressed with the 10.4, what happens when they release the raid will it then be 10.5. You wear the uniform for pvp, I don't get why they didn't just have fixed pvp gear to choose from like gw2, would make it easier to balance and mean they wouldn't have to constantly adjust pvp every time new pve gear comes out.

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In the last interview with Joel Bylos he claimed they plan to keep gear at 10.4 and aim at horizontal progression. Seems like they have agreed to turn away from the gear grind. Not sure what they plan to replace it with though. 1.4 looks very good, hope they get it out without too many bugs:)

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Originally posted by KuppaWhat exactly do those battlegroups mean?

That the servers instead of having a unique Fusang will share the Fusang instance with the other servers in the battlegroup. They have also matched the servers so that if one server was Templar dominated, another dominated by Dragon and a third by Illuminati, they have merged them into one battlegroup - so they will hopefully have a better balance when it comes to active Fusang players.

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The changes for PvP and also the changes to Escalation and Tanking sound very promising. The devs are talking with the players every day at the testlive forums and even on the official forums too. Very nice.

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A lot of positive changes but they haven't addressed the fundimental problems with PvP, that certain builds (more specifically certain abilities) are godlike and most others are terrible.

I'll wait and see if they rebalance the entire skill system to make pvp viable before i will resub to try this. I got bored destroying groups on my own with no challenge simply because i knew what abilites were stupidly powerful and how to chain them into a practically undefeatable build.

Min/maxers will know this build, 1v1 the only way to beat it is to copy it and pray.....and no, im not posting it :)

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A lot of positive changes but they haven't addressed the fundimental problems with PvP, that certain builds (more specifically certain abilities) are godlike and most others are terrible.

I'll wait and see if they rebalance the entire skill system to make pvp viable before i will resub to try this. I got bored destroying groups on my own with no challenge simply because i knew what abilites were stupidly powerful and how to chain them into a practically undefeatable build.

Min/maxers will know this build, 1v1 the only way to beat it is to copy it and pray.....and no, im not posting it :)

There is a million of possible combinations, of course some are BS and some are "godlike".

The skill wheel and finding the perfect build is a kind of minigame - and I quite enjoy it :D

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Your not locked in classes, everyone is free to either copy fotm builds or make a counter build and farm fotmers. Besides the strongest elements are team builds anyway where players combo off of each others states.

To suggest skills are the main issue when no one is licked in a class is silly. The main issue with tsw pvp was pveers ruining the fun for real pvpers by just using fusang as a means to grind a first dungeon set by actively avoiding pvp (and screaming at people on chat who you know went to the pvp area to shock horror actually pvp)

The tick based reward system should fix this glaring flaw in tsw, though I fear its too late with most pvpers going gw2 or looking at ps2.

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Originally posted by Blackbrrd

Originally posted by KuppaWhat exactly do those battlegroups mean?

That the servers instead of having a unique Fusang will share the Fusang instance with the other servers in the battlegroup. They have also matched the servers so that if one server was Templar dominated, another dominated by Dragon and a third by Illuminati, they have merged them into one battlegroup - so they will hopefully have a better balance when it comes to active Fusang players.

Kool, so its changing similar to WvW. I think that's a good move on their part.

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A lot of positive changes but they haven't addressed the fundimental problems with PvP, that certain builds (more specifically certain abilities) are godlike and most others are terrible.

I'll wait and see if they rebalance the entire skill system to make pvp viable before i will resub to try this. I got bored destroying groups on my own with no challenge simply because i knew what abilites were stupidly powerful and how to chain them into a practically undefeatable build.

Min/maxers will know this build, 1v1 the only way to beat it is to copy it and pray.....and no, im not posting it :)

There is a million of possible combinations, of course some are BS and some are "godlike".

The skill wheel and finding the perfect build is a kind of minigame - and I quite enjoy it :D

(My build is *almost* god like.. still working on it)

Yes, this is why I didn't like TSW's pvp. Its more about the meta game of build making than the actual pvp. Is a war of the builds and finding the OP, which even in balanced pvp games happens. But in this game is way too wide open so they will never find a balance to pvp.

I'm not saying this is wrong, there are many that like the build game. I just prefer balanced pvp.

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Tried the Kill a dev event and so far the changes are looking like a major step in the right direction for PvP. A little update for those of you considering a comeback to TSW PvP.

Fusang:

3 min ticker is great. A lot of smaller groups are taking wells and encourages less zerg style play. And you get rewarded for holding wells too, 7 white marks per tick atm. 126 for centre fac and about 100 I think for outer facs. Defending facilities will be a must. Well-control should be high priority after patch too.

Underdog faction mission was pretty good. I know, more pve in the pvp zone, but as a dragon we're gonna need that custodian a lot. Mission was good, and the custodian looks great. He's got a heal aura and good dps. A bit buggy atm though... Not sure how the patch will work out for the lowpop faction. Might get even harder to get facilities than before. But at least there should be no more fac swapping.

At testlive we get same gear, so no worries about the geargap. It seems like Funcom are intending to keep 10.4 gear as the max for a while, so lets hope they keep to that. With PvP gear now upgradable to 10.4 all the complaints about pve'ers with better gear should be over. Prices for pvp gear upgrades are gonna be lowered as well, around 15-20% atm. They have said that low ql players will get better buff than before, not sure how much. Gear will still be a factor though.

Factions can now also upgrade the npc's guarding the outer facilities, usng pax or white marks. Not sure if I like this change. With dimension merge, there will be higher pop in zone, and a decent group of 10 can take down current npc's very quickly. So I see why they want to give us the chance to buff the defence nps's, buying more time to organize defence by players. Max upgraded the custodian had about 800k hitpoints (normal 260k) and did a lot more dmg. If faction balance is decent, it will work out ok. But if numbers are very unbalanced this will be tough for the low pop faction. But then I'm biased here...

It looks like there will be quite a few changes to abilities as well. Nerfs etc is a dangerous path, but I get the feeling Funcom are doing them with small steps at the time, encouraging more diversity in deckbuilds. Nothing settled atm, so have to wait and see.

Raid GUI is still a mess. Haven't heard anything about fixing that. Not sure if they'll let us organize our own groups either, I really hope they'll come through on that. Group synergy can do wonders in TSW, but we need the tools to make it happen.

As for the minigames I don't really know. I've read they are going to remove tiers and buff low ql's a lot, but keep gear. I really hope they just copy GW2 and introduce equal gear for minigames. Abilities should be just the ones you've earned though.

All in all, still a way to go but a major step in the right direction. If you do make a comeback, man up and roll a Dragon:)